July 04, 2010

expatriate

I never even knew what this word was until I moved outside of the United States. And when you meet other foreigners over here in Europe they sometimes throw out the jazzy abbreviated version, "Are you an ex-pat?"

According to the dictionary:

expatriate, noun |eksˈpātrēit|

a person who lives outside their native country : American expatriates in London.

• archaic a person exiled from their native country

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Umm. I just hate the "ex" part. It makes it sound like something that's divorced from patriotism. In fact before I even looked up the word I thought it was spelled: "expatriot." No wonder I've got issues! Especially on the 4th of July. I'm proud to be an American wherever I am.

It's funny how our brains translate what our ears hear. This is similar to when I figured out that people were actually saying, "for all intents and purposes" instead of "for all intensive purposes." And peeps, maybe I should take a moment to point out that I am a native English speaker. No wonder my German never gets better! Yikes.

Here are some images from the Letter X of my Sampler Resolutionary. Previously I was working
with the word "Xenophobia" which is the fear of strangers. Now the
spread has turned political and patriotic. Sort of ironic because so much conflict comes from misunderstandings and incompatibility between cultures.